This is the third and final part of an interview with Brooks Kubik, the author of Dinosaur Training, conducted by Oreste Maria Petrillo. We hope you’ve been enjoying this three-part series.

For natural athletes, is it important to increase your strength to increase your muscle mass?

It definitely is. Most of the old-time, drug-free bodybuilders were tremendously strong, and as their strength increased, so did their muscular development. The best way to add 20, 30, 40 or more pounds of muscle to your body is to increase your strength in the basic compound exercises: squats, deadlifts, bench press, standing press, pull-ups, bent-over rowing, etc. But you can’t settle for modest increases in strength. To add 20 or 30 pounds of solid muscle, you need to get MUCH stronger. If you want to see significant increases in muscle mass, aim to add at least 50 pounds to the bar for your upper body exercises, and 100 pounds to the bar for squats and deadlifts.

Why can’t you just pump up with light weights?

For the vast majority of trainees, pumping the muscles with light weights doesn’t provide the growth stimulus for big gains in muscle mass. You need to train with heavy weights for that to happen. You gain muscle mass by working the biggest muscle groups in the body – the legs and hips, the back and the shoulder girdle – and because they are big and strong they don’t respond to light weights.

Pumping workouts originated as a way of burning body-fat so that a bodybuilder would have “definition” and “cuts” for a contest. Trainees in the 1940s and 1950s trained hard and heavy on basic, compound exercises to build strength and muscle mass – and then used pumping exercises (or what we would call “isolation exercises”) for cuts and definition. Sometimes they trained for three or four hours at a time to try to burn off as much body-fat as possible. This was before cardio training for bodybuilders, so they felt that they needed to do high volume, high rep workouts as part of their pre-competition routine.

Unfortunately, when the muscle magazines reported the champions’ pre-contest programs, they gave their readers the longer workouts with all of the pumping exercises. This led the readers to believe that the longer, pumping workouts were what the champion used to build his muscle mass. Instead, it was what the champion used to develop definition. And many champions – meaning many “easy gainers” – LOST strength and muscle like crazy when they followed their pre-contest programs.

You then had the sad, sorry sight of skinny trainees who needed a strength and mass program trying to get bigger by using a program the champion had used to become more defined. Of course, it never worked. You can’t build muscle mass on a definition program.

Trainees who use pumping workouts may show reasonable upper arm development, but their legs, back, and shoulders will almost always be very subpar – and those are the key parts of the body for truly significant gains in muscle mass.

Instead of pumping your upper arms for hours at a time, do some heavy squats and deadlifts! Training hard and heavy on the basic exercises will do far more to build muscle mass than any amount of pumping with light weights.

Are there other benefits from following a strength-oriented training program?

There definitely are! One of them is the time factor. When you train hard and heavy on basic, compound exercises, you don’t need to spend your entire life in the gym. You can get a great workout in 45 minutes to an hour. Even if you take a “long” workout, or if it’s really hot and you rest longer between sets, you should not need more than 90 minutes to two hours of training time. And you don‘t need to train every day. Three times per week is plenty.

In addition, when a trainee who has used the pumping system stops training for any reason, he usually loses any gains in muscular development very quickly. In contrast, a man who has built his body with strength-oriented workouts will find that his strength and muscle mass stays with him even if he is not able to train. Why in the world would anyone want to train for what are at best temporary gains rather than lasting increases in strength and muscle mass?

What kind of rest between sets do you recommend for natural athletes on a strength and muscle mass program?

Rest one to three minutes between warm-up sets.

Rest three to five minutes between your heavy sets.

You’ll probably rest longer between sets of heavy leg and back work than between sets of upper body work.

The important thing is to focus on your next set during the rest period. If you talk to other people, watch television, check your mobile device, scan the internet, look at Facebook or take selfies in-between sets, you’re not going to have a very good workout. You need to focus and concentrate the entire time that you are in the gym – and that includes rest periods.

For the squat and deadlift, which is better: 5 reps or 20 reps?

It depends on what your goal is, and on how your body responds to 20-rep sets compared to 5 rep sets. Many trainees have made excellent gains in strength and muscle mass by using the 20-rep breathing squat. Others do much better with the 5 x 5 system. It’s an individual thing.

I never had much luck with the 20-rep squat. I did much better with sets of 5 reps, and even with triples, doubles and singles.

If you are training for Olympic weightlifting, there’s little or no benefit in doing high reps in anything, including squats. Most Olympic lifters do singles, doubles or triples in the squat, and 5 reps would be about as many reps as they would ever do.

If you decide to try the 20-rep breathing squat, start with a very light weight and build up gradually and slowly. The traditional advice is to “Take your maximum weight for 10 reps and then do 20 reps with it.” That’s frankly ridiculous. The smart approach is to take HALF of your 10-rep weight and use that in your first 20-rep workout. From there, you can build up slowly, progressively, gradually and intelligently.

That covers the question with regard to squats. Deadlifts are a different story.

I am NOT a fan of the 20-rep deadlift, because trainees tend to let their form fall apart as the reps get higher – and that can lead to a serious injury. I believe that lower reps with perfect form are safer and more effective for deadlifts.

What kind of workout are you using right now?

I’ve become more and more interested in Olympic weightlifting over the past 7 or 8 years, and my current workouts are 100% Olympic weightlifting. However, I use weightlifting workouts that are appropriate for an older trainee. You have to remember that I’m almost 60 years old. At my age, you don’t recover from heavy workouts as fast as when you were younger.

I train three times per week. I lift in my garage. I have a homemade lifting platform, and that’s where I do all of my training.

My workouts last about 60 to 90 minutes. I begin with a 10 to 15 minute warm-up, and then begin my lifting for the day. I start with an empty barbell and work up from there. I usually do singles on all of my snatches and on the clean and jerk. On squats, front squats and pulls, I do singles, doubles and triples.

I typically do snatches, snatch pulls and front or back squats in one workout. In the next workout I do clean and jerk, clean pulls and front or back squats. I do some gut work at the end of each training session.

I train alone without a coach, so I videotape my workouts and review every lift on video (including the warm-up sets), so I can check my form. I try to do every lift in perfect form.

Flexibility and mobility are real challenges for an older weightlifter, and so I am doing more and more flexibility work, including daily stretching sessions. We’ll see how those help over the coming year.

My personal goal is to compete in Masters weightlifting competition in my 60s and 70s – and hopefully, longer than that! But even if I never enter official competition, I’m having great fun with weightlifting workouts – and at my age, it’s important to have fun when you train.

As I often tell people, I’m a grandfather, and I’ve been training for half a century, and I can do what I feel like doing when I train!

I have tremendous respect for everyone over the age of 50 who keeps on training, whether they do bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman, weightlifting, or whatever. Very few people keep training over the age of 50, so those that do are in a very unique class. And at age 60 and beyond, they become even more unusual. To my mind, they are all heroes.

Do you believe that older trainees need HRT or anabolic steroids to train effectively?

No, not at all. Using drugs of any sort is unnecessary at any age. I’ve never used them, and I’m not about to start now. When you use HRT or steroids, your body decreases its production of male hormones. That means you need to stay on the drugs forever, often with increasing dosages, or you need to prepare for a period where you go off the drugs and experience very low hormone levels for a period that may last for several years. That doesn’t sound like much fun.

In closing, what words of advice do you have for your Italian fans?

Keep on training hard, heavy and intelligently – avoid the fads and the silly stuff – stay away from drugs – and focus on lifelong strength and health. And thanks for doing what you do. By training the old-school way, you set a great example for others.

Thank you very much for doing this interview.

Thanks for asking me to do it.

ORESTE is the coauthor of the amazon bestseller “The Secret Book Of Old School Training”.

About the author: Brooks Kubik is a 58-year old weightlifter who still hits it hard and heavy in his garage gym. Brooks is a five-time National Bench Press Champion in the United States (competing in drug-tested competition).